[rating:3] :

I’m not entirely sure why Tre and I come here. Something draws us to this place. It’s not the food, and its definitely not the sticky tables. Located on East Hastings, this spot is a hole in a wall and has been here for quite some time. On Lok is known for their late night cheap eats and can get pretty busy. With its collective group of seniors, families, gangsters and just plain odd people, there have been times when I just don’t feel safe. Yet, it is the people that come here that make it special. The food itself is another story.

The congee here is okay. Nothing special. The black bean sauce over clams is surprisingly good: black bean sauce with hints of chili and garlic stir fried with clams. We’ve also had the spicy pork sauce over noodles with a side of soup. We like this dish — but we don’t like it here. The sauce is sickly sweet and overly greasy, kind of like oily ketchup. We’ve tried out their barbeque pork with rice. The barbeque pork was very greasy. The tenderness of the pork was not bad, but the flavour was too greasy for us. If you like greasy pork, then you might like this. We ordered stir fried Gai Lan( Chinese broccoli) once and we found a bug. We won’t be ordering any veggies here anytime soon. Finally, there was the honey garlic pork. This dish had potential but again, it was too greasy.

So why we do we come here? Well, we’ve got a soft spot for mom and pop restaurants. With all the fancy Chinese restaurants popping up, we’re seeing less and less classic Wun Tun houses. The service for us has always been good, which is unusual for a Chinese hole in the wall. The food may suck and the atmosphere, well — there isn’t one. I wouldn’t go out of my way to go here, but if you ever happen to find yourself on the streets of East Hastings late at night — you can always duck into On Lok’s for safety, and a bowl of wonton noodle soup.